Henry's Sisters (9 page)

Sometimes it’s a disastrous relationship.

Sometimes it’s both.

Cecilia dropped us off.

None of us said goodnight.

The silent treatment, I am sure, was engineered and developed by cavewomen fighting with their sisters over who got to spear the mastodon.

The next day we worked at the bakery starting in those wee hours again. It was the weekend, so Cecilia was there, too. She had hired a sitter to spend the night.

The atmosphere was frigid. Like the back of a polar bear’s butt if he’d been sitting on the ice for six years straight. Janie turned on sad classical music and kept looking wistfully at her therapist’s face.

We worked perfectly together, as if we were teenagers again, our steps choreographed, our movements fast but never in the way of anyone else, efficient and quick and good.

We were so good.

Until I heard Janie’s whimper.

Cecilia heard it, too.

Janie went into the freezer and shut the door.

Cecilia and I followed her into the freezer.

‘Honey,’ Cecilia said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Janie nodded her head, up and down, like a bobble head. ‘Me-Me-Me-too. I’m sorry.’

‘I love you, Janie.’

‘I love-lo-lov-you, too, Cecilia. And Is. Love you, Is.’

We hugged. We were tearful messes, trembling and carrying on with great drama.

Sisters are the worst. And they are the best. A sister can be awful and complicated and loving and protective and petty and competitive, and when you die she is the person you want beside you holding your hand.

Somebody’s gotta organise the potluck after the service and you know your husband’s not gonna be up to the job.

This I know.

I drank my latte with a squirt of Kahlúa in it by the Columbia River the next morning around five o’clock.

The sun was making its usual breathtaking appearance and the sky was golden and clean and soft.

I watched the windsurfer with the purple and red sail glide and fly over the water. It was the same man I’d seen when we drove to the hospital. If I was still a photographer, which I’m not (I ignored that shooting spasm of loss in my gut), I’d snap the shot.

I used to come down to this exact spot with friends and boys during school. I’d had sex in the Columbia River many times, starting in high school.

I hadn’t been a virgin when I arrived. I lost my virginity in a shed with rakes. He was the older brother of an acquaintance. Later he was jailed for raping a hitchhiker. He invited me into a shed and kissed me. That was kind of fun. He was an older boy, a tough guy sort that all naïve girls are attracted to, and he was paying attention to me.
Me!

The fun stopped when his hands wandered. I pushed them away, he shoved them back, and shoved me against some fertiliser and told me I’d ‘like it hard.’

I hadn’t liked it.

It felt as if my body were splitting in half; I could hardly breathe. I was petrified, ashamed, in agony, and trapped because he held my wrists above my head. I struggled; he grabbed my neck and held me down.

‘Relax,’ he bit out, as he yanked up my skirt, ripped my underwear, and started pumping, my tight body rejecting his, even though he shoved one of my legs to the side to open me up. ‘Are you frigid or something? A priss?’

I watched his face get redder through a haze of sheer pain, his pumping increasing in speed, his grunting piglike, until his spit sprayed my face one last time and he collapsed over me, his chest heaving. When he could move he squeezed my boobs like you would two sponges, got off, peed in a corner, zipped up, and left. I heard him whistling.

All I remembered seeing was a row of rakes. Rakes for leaves, rakes for gardens, big ones, small ones, tiny ones.

I lost my virginity, through rape, against a sack of fertiliser.

I was almost fourteen. It is a miracle I did not become pregnant.

I didn’t tell Momma about the rake incident because I knew she would blame me. I told Cecilia. She knew something had happened anyhow because her vagina hurt for days and she kept getting in the shower. She felt dirty and thought she smelt.

It was probably the fertiliser. I later dumped the clothes I was wearing, including my bra, which was held together by a safety pin.

Promiscuity followed me after that. Why not? I remembered feeling dirty and damaged, as if I was nothing anyhow. At home there was no dad, no stability, no love, and a momma who sank into a morass of hopelessness on a regular basis. I flirted with boys because I got attention, which I craved. Very unfortunately, I was skinny and sexy, which brought more boys, and amoral men, my way. Things went speeding downhill from there.

I grew to know other girls who were promiscuous in the various towns we’d lived in and we had one thing in common: an absent or abusive father or abuse by other men in our lives.

It was a sad, reckless, damaging commonality to have. We were regarded with disdain, nice boys’ mothers didn’t want us around, and ‘nice’ girls whispered horrible things behind cupped hands and moved away when we came near. We were labelled ‘sluts’, such a calamitous, hideous burden for a girl to bear.

And yet we were searching, endlessly searching, for the most innocent of all emotions, the purest of feelings, and what the heart longs for above all else: love.

Only love.

We found rakes instead.

Our dad became an absent dad the morning after he held a cocked gun to Momma’s head.

She was screaming, begging, weeping.

I was screaming, as were Janie and Cecilia, who later told me she heard my bloodcurdling screams in her chest. Henry was hollering in his crib. He was four, but he refused to sleep in a bed. Me and Cecilia were about eight, Janie was seven.

My dad believed, at least for the length of the flashback he was fighting through, that he was in mortal hand-to-hand combat with the Viet Cong. That was why his arm was snaked around Momma’s neck, his gun-holding hand shaking, his eyes wide and gone, gone like our fun dad wasn’t there anymore, gone and lost somewhere in the perilous jungles thousands of miles away.

This episode had followed other nightmares where our dad would leap out of bed and scream, ‘I’m fuckin’ gonna kill ya, ya got that, you slant-eyed gook?’ Or he’d grab Momma and yank her off the bed and whisper, ‘Get down! They’re coming!
They’re coming!
’

That dad scared me so bad that on several occasions I wet my pants.

As soon as the urine dribbled to the floor, Cecilia would wet her pants, too, and she would glare at me as if it were my fault. ‘I felt you peeing your pants. That was stupid, Isabelle. We’re not babies!’

‘Shut up, Cecilia.’ I was too scared to be humiliated. ‘Shut up!’

Dad had done two tours in Vietnam. On the second tour the Vietnamese invited him to live in a cage where they alternately beat, whipped, and starved him. He gathered rainwater to drink by sticking a hand through the bars. By the time he escaped, he weighed about one hundred pounds; had permanent scars on his back from a whip; was missing two fingers on his left hand, which had been chopped off; had a scar shooting through his right cheek, from a knife fight (he lost, it was six Vietnamese against him); and was partially deaf in one ear from the guns and a particularly bad beating.

His left knee had been broken twice while cage living, and he walked with a limp. He was on painkillers for his body but nothing for his mind.

Our government, so surprisingly, pretended these issues did not exist, and the response of people here in the States when they knew my dad had been in Vietnam was less than complimentary.

I remember him telling Momma, his voice edgy, raw, ‘I’ve been called a baby killer and rapist more times than I can count. I never killed a baby and I never raped a woman. How is it that I was drafted into a war I didn’t want to go to, didn’t want to fight, didn’t believe in fighting, my buddies are killed, I get beat to shit, I’m a prisoner of war, and when I come home, I’m the bad guy? I’m the rapist? I’m the baby killer? How does that happen?
How the fuck does that happen?
’

Momma’s response was to hug my dad all the time. She told me once, her eyes black with exhaustion, ‘I don’t know what else to do.
I don’t know what to do
. His monsters are bigger than we are.’

After one visit he refused to see a psychiatrist again. The psychiatrist had asked him, ‘How did living in Vietnam make you
feel
? Angry? Sad? Tell me your
feelings
.’

I heard him tell Momma that he had told the psychiatrist it had made him feel like killing the psychiatrist.

It hadn’t gone over well.

He had, however, managed to hold a job as a foreman in a factory. His anger was sometimes a problem at work, as were his reactions to any abrupt noise. He ducked and took cover, flying over anything in his way. To his credit, on a number of occasions, he also took down to the floor anyone who was by him, intending to save their lives, which paradoxically endeared him to many of his co-workers.

As his boss said to Momma after Dad had tackled him, ‘No one, and I mean no one, River, has ever tried to save my life. I like that man of yours.’

But Dad was also gentle and loving and told us stories, built us a tree fort, and said he loved his ‘Beautiful Bommarito Bambinos.’ He sang songs and paid special attention to Henry.

And the man cooked. I think creating beauty in the kitchen, filling our meals with spices and flavourings and richness, was a haven for him. There was no hopeless war, no ricochet of bullets, no prisoner starving to death next to him, no swampy jungle hiding a lethal enemy. It was him, his kids, his kitchen – something he could control, a gift he could give to his family.

‘Food is art, girls, don’t forget it,’ he’d tell us.

We didn’t just eat, we dined. He minced, diced, sliced, stewed, sautéed, bubbled, rolled, and marinated. Sauces were drizzled, vegetables scalloped, breads twisted into golden yum.

His desserts were legendary. Nothing was too difficult for his family. He’d bring out his cookbooks, we girls would choose a dessert and, together, we’d whip it up. It
always
looked like the picture in the book.

But the night my dad held a loaded gun to Momma’s head, he knew it was over. He was done. If we were going to be safe, he could not live with us one more day.

He left the next morning, early. I heard him with Momma. I hid in a closet and cracked the door. ‘You’ll be fine, River. I know you will be. I love you. I will always love you. Not a day will go by when I won’t think of you, sugar.’

Momma had cried and they had kissed, long and with such passion I averted my gaze and studied a lamp, before he’d quietly shut the door and Momma collapsed on our white linoleum kitchen floor, her body shaking.

The sad part was that even though we had a dad who had diabolical flashbacks, swore at non-existent Vietnamese people, fought against his nightmares, dragged Momma to safety at two o’clock in the morning, had rages and furies, was obviously hanging on to sanity by a fingernail, and came within a hair of shooting Momma’s brains out, we missed him terribly.

Though there were no Viet Cong chasing us down a muddied river or through a dirt tunnel, no helicopters picking up partially blown-up buddies, no eardrum-shattering bombs, no burning villages or Agent Orange, our own nightmare had only just begun.

The bakery was clearly a failure.

Like Janie said, Momma’s treats tasted like kidneys, her pies like guts, and her bread like a carcass. Momma had never learnt how to cook like Dad.

I needed to do some advertising so the town would know that, at least temporarily, we had new management. I needed to get people in here and excited about what we baked. I needed help.

‘Hey hey!’ Henry yelled, dangling the bell on the door of the bakery. ‘I here to say, “Hi, Is!”’

I eyed him. He was wearing a red and blue beanie and a green shirt with a gold cat on it. It said ‘Nice Kitty’.

Yep. Henry would do nicely.

I put a striped apron on Henry, sliced up a chocolate cake into little pieces, and put them on doilies.

‘You’re going to be the chief advertiser for Bommarito’s Bakery!’ I told him.

‘Ha!’ He laughed. ‘Ha! I the chief! Big chief!’

‘Yep. You’re in charge of the outside treats.’

‘OK dokay. I do that!’ He grinned, adjusted his beanie. ‘What I do, Is?’

‘Henry, you give people a little cake on a doily.’

‘I do it! I give them cake!’

‘For free. No charge.’

‘Ha! Free cake to all the peoples and I tell them Jesus loves you, I do it!’

We set up a table outside and covered it with a red-and-white flowered tablecloth and set Henry to work.

I watched him for a second, that protective instinct I have for him in full force.

It was unnecessary.

That man knew almost everyone walking by and he greeted them by name or said, ‘Hello to the man behind the counter at the pharmacy with the funny glasses!’ or ‘It the lady at the hair salon with black nails!’ or ‘You drive blue truck. It growl like a bear! Grrrr!’ He was always excited to see people and they stopped to chat and hug him.

‘Jesus loves you!’ he informed them. When no one was in front, he sang songs to himself.

In the end we sold out of all of our cakes, including a chocolate cheesecake with crumbled cookie crust, apple coffee cake with cinnamon, and carrot cake with thick cream cheese icing and an iced pink bunny holding a giant carrot.

At five o’clock we closed and cleaned up.

‘Well, not a bad day at the bakery,’ I said to Janie, so exhausted even my teeth hurt.

‘Not bad at all. Feel this, Isabelle.’ She ran her hands through a bag of oats ‘I think this is what dried, crushed people bones would feel like. What do you think?’

We worked like our hair was on fire the next few days at the bakery. I whipped up a cake shaped like a snake with crossed eyes, a pink zebra, and a giraffe with a long, long neck. If the kids love it, the parents’ll buy it. That’s my motto.

Janie baked a wedding cake that she decorated with light pink icing and this flowing, cascading ring of flowers out of marzipan icing. It was stunning. I saw people line up outside to stare at that cake.

The perfection of that cake reminded me of my dad and the sheer beauty of the cakes he baked with us. I turned away.

Belinda came in, same time as always, laid down on a bench in the booth, and went to sleep. Today she smelt like roses. Through the window I saw her shopping cart and the black bags. A little face appeared and I blinked.

Belinda had a black cat. It was wearing a pink bow.

Janie and I exchanged a glance.

What were we supposed to do about Belinda, anyhow?

One time I’d woken up by myself on a park bench. That would not be so unusual, but I had no idea what park I was in and was further confused about which state. I knew I was in America because I saw the flag.

Our grandma believes she’s Amelia Earhart, our brother informs everyone that Jesus loves them, and our momma, elegant and well dressed, could slice and dice anyone who got in her way like an expert swordsman and has done so many times. Momma and Grandma once had a screaming match in church because Momma wouldn’t hold Grandma’s hand during the Our Father prayer. The blessing had been given over their shrieks.

Cecilia swears like a fishwife when not teaching kindergarten and weighs close to three hundred pounds and Janie has to chill in the freezer a few times a day to cool her head off and break up her counting regimens. I have a man problem and have battled depression problems so all-encompassing I felt my toes dangling over the pit of hell. Our dad took off because he mentally time travelled back to Vietnam.

Now, come on. Who are Janie and I to judge anyone for their odd behaviours?

We let Belinda sleep.

On Wednesday Janie and I drove Henry to the church for his volunteer work with the high school group.

I stared at the carved church doors, the cross on top of the roof, and the statue of Mary.

I had spent many hours there as a high schooler. Momma had insisted. I had gone to church on Sundays, no matter how hung over I was from the night before or what had transpired six short hours before church in the back of some guy’s car.

I had attended the classes on Wednesday nights and confessed nefarious numerous sins to Father Mike and the following day went back out and committed the same ones.

I had had sex with three guys in the basement and two on the altar. We even stole the communion wafers to eat with the stolen wine. I had told Cecilia and Janie that now we could eat a ton of the body of Christ and gallons of his blood. We thought that was hilarious.

I wanted to see Father Mike, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t go into that church. I had done too much. I could not forget what I had done, or forgive myself. There probably was not a commandment I hadn’t broken. Except for coveting thy neighbour’s wife. I had never coveted a wife.

Henry gave me a kiss on the cheek and a smile.

‘Bye, Henry, have fun.’

‘OK dokay, Isabelle. You have fun, too. You going home make spaghetti now?’ On Wednesday night, Henry came home and had spaghetti.

‘Yes, I’m going to make spaghetti.’

‘Meatballs?’ He grinned at me.

‘Meatballs, too. I promise.’

‘Stringy cheese?’

He meant parmesan cheese. ‘Yes, stringy cheese, too.’

Henry grinned again and clapped his hands. ‘I love you, Janie and Isabelle, my sisters. Yeah, yeah, I do. My sisters.’

‘I love you, too, Henry.’

‘Love ya, Henry.’ Janie blew a kiss.

And I did love Henry. I watched him amble up the church steps, those brown curls silky and smooth. A group of teenagers turned the corner when Henry reached the bottom and I instantly cringed. Janie sucked in her breath.

My hand clenched the handle of the car, as did Janie’s, ready to race out and protect Henry, as we’d done as kids, to protect him from one fist-punching freak or another.

One time, while we were living in some backwater, mosquito-infested town in South Carolina, three kids chased Henry all the way home through a field when he was in fourth grade. They hit him with their backpacks, yelled at him, held him down in the mud, and swore.

Now for anyone, being chased by a gang of rowdy kids is terrorising. But if you are a specially abled person, like Henry, the fear is magnified. It’s like you’re being attacked by a sword-wielding army, with a siren ringing in your ears, and you’re stuck in a dripping tunnel with hissing, biting snakes and can’t figure the way out or why this disaster is here in the first place.

He burst in our front door bruised and bloodied and screaming. He didn’t stop screaming for an hour. His screaming woke Momma up, who was in the midst of another black bout, and she started wailing. They clung to each other. Eventually we got Henry’s hands unpried from Momma and got him cleaned and bandaged up as he told us what happened between tears and hiccups and a spell of hyperventilating.

The next day, after school, Cecilia, Janie, and I waited for our prey. We watched Henry leave school and head home wearing his favourite green baseball hat with a frog on it and a shirt that said ‘Boo!’ We had told him we would get the bad guys and protect him, but he was so nervous he was shaking, his walk an odd gait.

That same gang of shits started following him. ‘Hey, retard! Retard!
REEEEETARD
! Stupid head! Yeah, you!’